October 29, 2024
Washington, DC – Physician-led organizations focused on primary care – including multiple member organizations of America’s Physician Groups (APG) – continue to produce top results in the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP), based on 2023 results released today by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). These primary care-focused organizations earned “significantly higher net per capita savings than ACOs with a smaller proportion of primary care clinicians,” the agency said in a news release, while also earning high quality scores.
A pertinent example: APG member organizations Austin Regional Clinic (ARC) and the Ascension Seton Health Alliance, ACO partners that have scored shared savings every year for the past decade and are once again among top performers. ARC’s president and CEO, Anas Daghestani, MD, also chairs APG’s Board of Directors. APG is now analyzing the announced MSSP results and will shortly issue a more complete list of its high-performing members who are MSSP participants.
Overall, MSSP participants in 2023 produced more than $2.1 billion in net savings for the federal government and taxpayers and earned shared savings payments of $3.1 billion, the highest since the program began in 2012, CMS noted in its release.
“These newly announced MSSP results build on earlier ones demonstrating that physician-led ACOs produce the highest net savings, and that they do so largely through primary-care–based efforts to keep patients as healthy as possible and out of hospitals,” said Susan Dentzer, president and CEO of America’s Physician Groups. “We know from experience that our members then plow their shared savings back into better care coordination, care redesign, improved infrastructure, and other changes that drive superior outcomes for patients and savings for the government and taxpayers.”
“APG and its members continue to believe that value-based care models such as MSSP, ACO REACH, other models introduced by the CMS Innovation Center, and arrangements in which physician groups share risk with Medicare Advantage plans are the best path forward for U.S. health care,” said Daghestani. “We applaud the performance of all our member groups, who seek to be held accountable for costs and quality and take responsibility for America’s health and health care.”
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About America’s Physician Groups
America’s Physician Groups is a national association representing approximately 360 physician groups with approximately 170,000 physicians providing care to nearly 90 million patients. APG’s motto, “Taking Responsibility for America’s Health,” represents our members’ commitment to clinically integrated, coordinated, value-based health care in which physician groups are accountable for the costs and quality of patient care. Visit us at www.apg.org.
Contact: Jennifer Salopek, APG Vice President of Communications, jsalopek@apg.org or (703) 909-9059
